The broadcaster Andrew Marr will present the series for BBC One, which will examine her role in the running of the country.

The three part show will be broadcast in 2012, the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Marr, the BBC's main political presenter said he has already started researching the project. He said he expected the programme to be “properly serious and intelligent”.

“This will be about how she reigns, what it means, what we do and don’t get out of the royal banquets and visits – and her vast accumulated knowledge of the inside story of every government since Churchill was prime minister,” he said.

However, Buckingham Palace has remained cautious about granting access to BBC cameras following the ‘Queengate’ row and Marr said that progress has been moving at a “stately” pace.

The BBC had to apologise to the Queen in 2007 for showing clips wrongly implying she had stormed out of a sitting with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, when the footage was actually of her walking in.

The incident forced the resignation of Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC One.

Marr said: “There was quite a sense of being once bitten [by Queengate] – but good for them [the palace] that they haven’t slammed closed the shutters,”

He added: “It’s early days. I haven’t got a single shot in the can yet. There is a delicate balance between securing access that will give us proper insight on the one hand, and being too intrusive on the other,” he told Broadcast.